A Tinker by Trade

While we were walking through Bratislava’s St. George Courtyard, I looked up and saw a familiar face. “Mickey!” He looked at me blankly but then noticed Suzi and a light went on. Suzi has changed less than I, I no longer have black hair and a black beard and I’ve shed 50 pounds since I last saw Mickey.

Mickey is , When I was working in Slovakia Mickey was manager of the local TV station in Pukov, it was one of the best run stations in the Local TV Association (LoTOS). I knew that Mickey did metal work as a hobby. His father and grandfather were traveling tinkers who walked throughout the Balkans and Central Europe fixing pots and fabricating useful tools. Mickey inherited his father’s tools, which he was proud to tell me were “Gypsy tools, the best in the world.” But he had become an engineer and a photographer and ended up managing the station. He made decorative items from metal wire, as well as kitchen tools like whisks. One Easter he showed me easter eggs that he had decorated using wire and on a visit to Mickey after the program Slovak ProMedia program closed he gifted me an egg, which we still have. You can see my post here.

After leaving the station he went back to being a building engineer and building inspector but in retirement he took up his tinkering. He is not selling things at this fair but he is showing how, rather than replace a pot with a burned out bottom or with holes, a good tinker can fix that pot. He shows how, if you have a cracked ceramic pot, you can use wire to bind it together so tightly that it can still be useful. His wife regrets that no one repairs anything anymore, if you burn out the bottom of a pot or have a leak in a kettle you throw it away and buy a new one. It’s easier but such a waste! There aren’t so many traveling tinkers these days.

Mickey does not speak English, and his wife has only a little of the language. But his cousin’s son (Is this first cousin once removed) could speak very good English and translated for us as we reminisced about his work in TV, which he said might have been his favorite job, and our work in Slovakia, where we learned more than we taught.

At folk fairs like this Mickey takes his father’s wooden backpack filled with tools and the warm coat the tinker wore when traveling, and becomes the itinerant tinker, showing people how to repair their pots and kettles and, while he is at it, how to build a better mousetrap.

Mickey still does decorative work. Like decorating coffee mugs with wire, not because they leak but because it’s pretty. He gave Suzi a mug that he had decorated with wire. Wirework was the featured craft of this year’s festival.